1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a technique of generating image data from information consisting of multiple frames.
2. Description of the Related Art
Generation of image data representing a still image from video data representing video shot with a digital video camera or the like, and printing out of still images based on such image data, is known in the prior art. Video data is composed of data for a plurality of frames representing images by means of tone data for a multitude of pixels, on a pixel by pixel basis; image data that represents a still image by means of tone representation with a multitude of pixels is created by acquiring and synthesizing data for a predetermined number of frames selected from the video data.
Since video shot with a digital video camera is often shaky due to camera shake, vertical and horizontal deviation among images represented by multiple frames of data is detected in pixel units, superimposing the image over a standard image, and translating it (i.e. subjecting to parallel movement) by Nx pixels in the horizontal direction and Ny pixels in the vertical direction (where Nx and Ny are positive integers) in order to minimize vertical and horizontal deviation.
Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. H11-164264 teaches a process for resolution conversion from a standard resolution image into a high resolution image, by providing high-resolution image memory, detecting motion of the image, and infilling the pixels of the high resolution image a plurality of standard resolution image pixels translated according to motion of the image. As disclosed in section 0089 of this cited publication, the process of infilling each pixel of the image is repeated until a determination is made that a scene change has occurred, or that input of distorted images (standard resolution images) has been completed.
The prior art has drawbacks such as the following.
The former technique has the drawback of requiring extended processing time, due to generation of more image data than is necessary for the required image quality, resulting from the fixed number of frames of data synthesized.
The latter technique has the drawback also has the drawback of requiring extended processing time, since frame information continues to be synthesized until determination is made that a scene change has occurred or that input of frame information has been completed, thus also generating more image data than necessary for the required image quality.